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Forget visiting the White House, if you have $10 million you can own it. At least that is the price for the president's home on the real estate website Redfin. From the article: "Obviously this is an error. It looks like Redfin software pulled an example listing from the website Owners.com by mistake. That example listing was the White House. We have e-mailed Redfin for comment." I know it's historic but it still looks a bit on the high side according to the comparables in the area.

This isn't news really, I mean we all know that the white house has been for sale to the highest bidders for that last few administrations.

The White House... and every other government center of power... has been for sale on and off since they all came to exist. That's the rotten nature of politics. The more a politician claims to be cleaner than his opponents, the more skeletons he has in his closet.

I heard someone say once (it may have been Ira Glass on TAL but, I am not sure), "If I told you that I am basically a decent guy, you would instantly know that I am not to be trusted, and you should probably keep your kids away from me".

Overall, I don't think that reaction is as common as it should be, because the sentiment seems to be dead on.

I am certainly not the first person to point out that the politicians and commentators who get caught with prostitutes or having affairs, all seem to be the ones that

Renting doesn't necessarily imply that you live there. Perhaps you are just renting the services of the current resident, which is even better than living there as you don't have to go from fresh to gray in 4 years.

Must have been to pricey to hire Indian resources to even screen the data coming in.

It was most likely not scraped, and almost certainly not screened.

I'm the DBA at a large (annual revenue in the billions) real estate firm, and we have feeds negotiated with all sorts of websites to syndicate our listing data around the web. Regional MLS boards operate under strict sets of rules surrounding what you can distribute and where. However, the onus is never on the publisher to screen listing data coming in; instead, a disclaimer such as "Information is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed" must be

What buildings near the White House are being used for comparison on this sale? My guess is that 10 Million is on the low side given the amenities in the house. Hell, there are places half that size out in Arlington that are going for a couple million, and they don't have anything like the primo location the White House enjoys.

What buildings near the White House are being used for comparison on this sale?

Depends if you are considering it a residence only or an office building with attached living quarters. If the latter then there are lots of office buildings nearby and I bet a lot of them have apartments or similar in among the offices. So since the WH wastes a lot of space on a huge lawn and garden and is only a few stories tall, it isn't worth much as a commercial office structure.

Fortunately if you just promise half of them to nuke somebody they dislike and the other half to save the endangered snails. Er, the snails endangered when you dropped that nuke, you're virtually guaranteed in.

maybe the bank's foreclosing and listing the property preemptively. Did anyone check to see if the Obamas were in default?
Just another black family getting tossed out by heartless corporate fatcats, nothing to see here.

I know it's historic but it still looks a bit on the high side according to the comparables in the area.

That statement most certainly does not account for all the "extras" the house comes with. Has several floors that extend below ground level. Security facilities. Built-in armageddon proof bomb shelter. State of the art communications. and so on.

This does prompt a good question: How much would it really cost to make a copy of the white house, including the known grounds and security stuff presumably inside, as accurately as possible minus the one-of-a-kind artifacts?

It's pretty tough to come up with an accurate number for a building that complicated without a decent amount of work, but we can ballpark some numbers just to give us something to think about. According to whitehousehistory.org, there's about 55,000 sq. ft. worth of space in the building. The typical american stick-frame house usually runs somewhere between $100 to $200 per square foot, depending on the design/finishes/etc. If we split that, and go with $150 per sq. ft., we're already up to $8.25 million. I think once you add on the fact that it's not 2x4 wood framing (there's actually a steel frame that replaced the original heavy timber framing), and that you've got stone facade rather than vinyl siding, probably some very nice finishes, plus the fact that a bunch of people work there all day, plus all the security stuff, plus facilities for tours coming through, etc...you'd probably be looking at at least three or four times that. Buildings are expensive.

Yeah, but that's just for duplicating it as a "normal house". I think you MASSIVELY underestimate the "security stuff"... ie, the giant underground bunker underneath the East Wing known as the "Presidential Emergency Operations Center". Not to mention all of the security systems (laser blinders? Stinger batteries? Flying monkeys??) we don't know about...

(also, it's probably not necessary for a back of the hand calculation like this, since it seems to have been done by expert real estate appraising comp

In the interest of full disclosure. We have to report a major structural fire on August 24, 1814. Most of the interior was gutted, and some exterior walls had to be re-built. The fire was ruled to be Arson, perpetrated by a gang of disgruntled Canadians.
Since that time, there have been 40 other owners. Mostly white professionals although persons of a mixed ethnic background have been moving into the area in recent years.

To try to sell something this expensive without title to it. Obviously this is a hack. But there have been cases of "title identity theft" in the past by shady characters in my town. The county clerks dont rigorously check all the documents. If you after a change of mortgage lien along with owner name change, they assume the banks have worked it out. The shady cahracters would disguise this during a refi.

If you take into account the vast deep nuclear bunkers under the building, with self-sufficient life support, massive communication infrastructure and likely miles of secret passages, $10mln sounds like a very modest price for a secret base for a supervillain.

The same thing is true in the USA, and older than the 60s: Selling the Brooklyn Bridge. Though jokes about it abound, several different Con men have "sold" it many times over in the past. It invariably ends with a sucker trying to build a toll both, waving a deed at the police, then being hauled off the bridge.